prairie homesteads
Plains settler dwellings
Prairie homesteads were farms established on the vast grasslands of central North America, particularly under the Homestead Act of 1862, which granted settlers 160 acres of public land in exchange for improving it.
The term evokes images of sod houses, harsh winters, and the isolation of frontier life: My great-grandparents built their prairie homestead with nothing but determination and borrowed tools.
- land rushMass race for territory
- sod housesTurf-walled prairie shelters
- log cabinsDwellings of stacked timber
- dugoutsRecessed team benches
- dirt floorBare ground as flooring
land grants · self-sufficiency · milk cow · grasslands · sodbusters · harsh winters · schoolhouses · westward expansion · Great Plains · windmills · windbreaks · barter economy · general store · water scarcity · root cellars · bison · plows · wheat field
- frontier relicsarrowheads, covered wagons, wagon wheels, log cabins, sod houses
prairie homesteadsSouthern plantations
Historic slave-worked agricultural estates
cotton plantations · sugar plantations · landed estates · haciendas · tenant farms
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